


It's Not Fiction

by toyhto



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: -ish at least, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, But with all seriousness, Crack, Getting Together, M/M, Or maybe I'm just ignoring everything that happened after season 2, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29215650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: It turns out that people on the internet are writing porn about John and Sherlock.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 67
Kudos: 182





	It's Not Fiction

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was fun.
> 
> The stories and the writers in this piece of fiction are totally made up. Any resemblance to anything is coincidental.
> 
> Say hello to me on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com)!

“John?” Sherlock asked.  
  
John looked up from the morning newspaper. “Yeah?”  
  
“Are you aware that people are writing sexually explicit stories about us?”  
  
John blinked. Then he opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. Maybe there had been something in his tea. That wouldn’t have been the first time, or the second, or the third. But he had made Sherlock swear multiple times that it would never happen again.  
  
John took his cup of tea from the side table and sniffed at it.  
  
“I didn’t put anything in your tea,” Sherlock said, sounding slightly bored. “You told me that if I did that again, you’d take away my skull.”  
  
“I didn’t –,“ John began and then bit his lip. Well, he had said so, and it sounded surprisingly petty now, but to his defence, he _had_ been tired and slightly drugged. He took a deep breath and sipped his tea, and then he remembered what Sherlock had said just a moment ago. “Sherlock?”  
  
“Yes?” Sherlock said. He was sitting on the sofa in a dressing gown, balancing John’s laptop on his knees. God only knew what he was doing with it.  
  
“What do you mean, people are writing sexually explicit stories about us?”  
  
Sherlock frowned at him as if that was something they had talked about yesterday. “Oh, that. What part of it is unclear to you?”  
  
He cleared his throat. “Well, everything.”  
  
“ _Everything?_ ” Sherlock asked in his _John, this is below your average level of stupidness_ -voice.  
  
“I mean,” John said quickly, “ _people?_ What people? Who is… writing about us?”  
  
“I don’t know their names,” Sherlock said. “They’re using nicknames. I suppose I could find out, but I don’t care.”  
  
“You don’t care who’s… writing about us?”  
  
“No. Dull.”  
  
“And when you said…”  
  
“…yes?”  
  
John bit his lip. He was pretty sure that Sherlock had said _sexually explicit,_ which was kind of odd, really, because Sherlock never talked about sex. There had been a time when John had suspected that maybe Sherlock had deleted sex altogether, with the knowledge about the solar system and prime ministers. But Sherlock certainly could tell when John had got laid. Not that it happened often, because it didn’t, not these days anymore, even though John liked to think that he _was_ still quite good-looking for a forty-year-old ex-soldier, and he _was_ funny and considerate and great in bed and _could_ have been having a nice amount of sex with nice and attractive women. The problem was that John was also living with Sherlock Holmes, who could tell from the collar of his shirt if he had got laid in the past twenty-four hours.  
  
And, well, there were also a few other complications. He didn’t want to move out. Absolutely not. He wanted to live with Sherlock and solve crimes together, sometimes in a short notice, like, maybe five minutes, if he was lucky. So, being Sherlock’s colleague, flatmate and friend took pretty much all his spare time and a considerable amount of what was supposed to be his working time. He supposed he could have had one-night stands, but that seemed like a lot of fuss for almost nothing, and still there was a risk that Sherlock would text him and he would have to leave when he had just got to the fun part.  
  
“John?”  
  
So, no, he wasn’t having much sex these days. But Sherlock wasn’t having _any_ sex, and that was kind of comforting, because at least one of them was having even less sex than John. Well, John didn’t _know_ if Sherlock was having sex or not, but he spent pretty much all his waking hours with Sherlock, so he had a good guess.  
  
And yeah, Sherlock didn’t like to talk about sex, but still he seemed to be able to tell who was fucking whom with one glance. It was bloody infuriating. And impressive.  
  
_“John?”  
_  
But surely Sherlock had had some sex at some point in his life. He must have. He obviously knew how it worked. Or maybe he had just read a manual -  
  
“John!”  
  
John almost dropped his cup of tea. “What? Why’re you yelling at me?”  
  
“You weren’t listening,” Sherlock said, staring at him. “You were about to ask me something, but then instead you just stared at me for _forty-five_ seconds, not saying anything. _Forty-five_ seconds, John! I’m busy.”  
  
“Yeah, sure,” John said, “as if I don’t sometimes wait for your answer for half a day. What’re you doing anyway?”  
  
“Research,” Sherlock said and closed John’s laptop. “Now, do you have something to ask me or can I get back to it without you staring at me?”  
  
“Probably not,” John said. Then he remembered what he had tried to ask. _Shit._ “Right. So, I was going to ask…” _Bloody hell._ “You said, they write _sexually explicit_ stories about us –“  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Like…” Oh, god. He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. “Like, porn?”  
  
“I suppose most of those stories have some kind of a plot,” Sherlock said. “But yes, I suppose you could call them that.”  
  
“A plot –“  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But they are about… you and me?”  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “I believe that was the first thing I told you. Are you feeling alright? Maybe your constant consumption of true television shows has finally corrupted the last of your mental capabilities.”  
  
“For the last time, they aren’t true television shows, they are anthropological documents,” John said. They were true television shows. He just didn’t think Sherlock could tell the difference. “Are you really telling me that someone on the internet is writing porn about us?”  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock said, “I have told you that multiple times already. Maybe you should take notes.”  
  
“But… _who?_ ”  
  
“They use nicknames. I told you that.”  
  
“But…”  
  
“For example, _Johnlocked85._ Or _SexInAHat001_. Or _sherlock_has_a_fine_ars3_.”  
  
John realised vaguely that he was staring at Sherlock with his mouth half-open. He just couldn’t stop. People were… random people on the internet were… about Sherlock and him… and if it really was _sexually explicit,_ then maybe that meant that… Sherlock and him were… that they were _having sex_. In those stories. That people wrote. On the internet. Oh, god.  
  
“Are you having a heart attack?” Sherlock asked, sounding curious.  
  
“No,” John said. He swallowed. Then he swallowed again. Then he sipped his tea, and it helped. “I just… _why?_ ”  
  
Sometimes it happened that Sherlock knew exactly what John was talking about, even if John himself wasn’t sure. This made him suspect that maybe Sherlock knew things about him that he didn’t know himself. But he had chosen to ignore that line of thought a long time ago.  
  
“Well, I’m not an expert,” Sherlock said in a tone that suggested he would have been, if only he had wanted to, “but I suppose they’re writing sexually explicit stories about you and I, because we are kind of famous, and they’re reading about us in the newspapers, and maybe they’re reading your blog, too. So, they’re curious about our personal lives, at least on a fictional level, and therefore they think it’s fun to write us having…”  
  
“Sex,” John said, when it became obvious Sherlock wasn’t going to finish that sentence.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“But… _why?_ ”  
  
“Oh my god,” Sherlock said, stood up and walked to the kitchen. He took John’s laptop with him. The hems of his dressing gown were flapping around his knees. He was wearing boxers and socks but nothing else under the dressing gown. John didn’t understand how he didn’t freeze. “Don’t talk to me,” Sherlock said and sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m tired of answering your stupid questions.”  
  
“Fine,” John said and took the newspaper. That was just fine. He would just sit here, reading the newspaper and not thinking about how apparently there were people who wrote porn about Sherlock and him. He definitely wasn’t going to think about that. Not at all. He didn’t even care what kind of sex they were having in those stories. Maybe it was gay sex.  
  
Three minutes later, Sherlock asked John what his thoughts were about the periodic table.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“John? Can I talk to you?”  
  
“Of course,” John said to Greg and stepped away from the corpse. It was a cold morning and he wished he knew how to wear a scarf. He glanced at Sherlock, who was apparently trying to see under the victim’s clothes without actually undressing the poor lad, and then he followed Greg until they were standing behind a Toyota Corolla which looked like it might never leave this parking lot again. “I’m glad you called, by the way,” he told Greg. “We haven’t had a case in a week. He was going crazy at home. He’s been doing something with my laptop for days, and I don’t even know what, but I think it has something to do with the periodic table.”  
  
“Okay,” Greg said, frowning at Sherlock, who was now staring at the victim’s feet. John just hoped Sherlock was wearing enough clothes under his coat. It would be terrible if Sherlock caught a cold. “John –,” Greg started.  
  
Oh, right. “Yeah? What did you want to talk about? Sherlock?”  
  
“Kind of,” Greg said slowly. He was looking a little worried.  
  
“ _Shit._ What’s he done now? He hasn’t said anything to me.”  
  
“It’s nothing like that,” Greg said and cleared his throat, “except that last week, he came to the station and reorganized our evidence room completely. I asked why and he said you were at the clinic, so apparently he was just bored. I’ve got to admit, the new system is better, but it took us a few days to realise what it was. Well, it took us a week. Or… okay, we’re still trying to figure it out. But that’s not what I was going to… John, have you been on the internet lately?”  
  
“Yeah,” John said, watching Sherlock. He shouldn’t have been glad to hear that Sherlock had been bored when he had been at work. That was just childish of him.  
  
“No, I mean… do you know what people do? On the internet?”  
  
“Yeah, I –“ He paused and glanced at Greg. “What?”  
  
Greg was looking at John like he had that one time after a particularly messy case, when Sherlock had been covered in blue paint and human blood and John had tried to get them a cab. “Because some people are… there’re some people on the internet who… I mean, you and Sherlock are… you two are pretty famous, and that’s…”  
  
John had a very bad feeling about this conversation. “Greg, are you trying to tell me that people write porn about me and Sherlock?”  
  
“Yeah,” Greg said, “yeah, that’s exactly what I… You knew already.”  
  
“Sherlock told me a few days ago.”  
  
“…Sherlock told you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Do you know how he…”  
  
“Figured it out? No, I don’t know. It could be anything. Maybe Google had a new logo and he deduced it from that.” John bit his lip. “Or maybe he googled his own name. He does that surprisingly often.”  
  
Greg nodded. “Well, that makes sense. And that’s good. So, you both know that –“  
  
“Yeah, we know.”  
  
“- that random people write stories in which you have sex.”  
  
“Yeah, we know.”  
  
“Like, a lot of sex.”  
  
“Yeah, we…” John blinked. “How much?”  
  
“ _A lot_ ,” Greg said. “Well, of course there’re stories in which it’s mostly, I don’t know, you making him tea and the two of you bantering about something, then maybe a few murders, something like that. But there’re also stories that are mainly just sex. Like, there’s one in which you both get locked in a cleaning closet and he’s very bored and then he…”  
  
John stared at Greg. Greg took a deep breath and pushed his hands into his pockets.  
  
“Maybe you don’t want details.”  
  
“You read it?”  
  
“No, I just…”  
  
“ _Greg_ –“  
  
“Yeah, alright, I read it. I was curious. I thought I’d just take a glance at it, but it was very well written, and you know that I’m a little bit lonely these days, John, the divorce was hell and now I should start dating again, but the last time I was dating, I didn’t even own a mobile phone. I don’t know how to do it. I really would like to find someone, it’s just that it’s very difficult. And sometimes it’s nice to sit on the sofa after a long day at work and read a nice story about two people being in love and having sex in the closet.”  
  
“ _Me and Sherlock_. You’re reading about _me and Sherlock._ Having sex. _In the closet._ ”  
  
“Yeah, alright, I understand it sounds a little weird,” Greg said. “So, you haven’t read any of those stories?”  
  
“No,” John said, “of course not.”  
  
“Right. Of course not. So…” Greg cleared his throat. “How are things? At home?”  
  
John glanced at Sherlock, who looked like he was sniffing the corpse’s neck. He probably was. John just wished he wasn’t licking it. He had said once that the taste of human skin was surprisingly informative. “What do you mean, how are things at home?” John asked.  
  
“Between you and Sherlock,” Greg said. “When I heard about the sex stories, I thought… I just hope it’s not going to make it more difficult for you two to…”  
  
“To do what?”  
  
“You know.”  
  
“No,” John said slowly, “I don’t know. Tell me.”  
  
“No, it’s just…” Greg sighed. “It’s just that you’ve lived together for years now, and you’re obviously…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Well,” Greg said, staring at him, “you know.”  
  
“No, I don’t know,” he said. He had a tiny suspicion that maybe he didn’t want to know, either. And at the same time he wanted to take Greg to a pub and give the man five beers and make him talk. “What?”  
  
“John,” Greg said, looking at him as if there was something obvious he didn’t realise, “you are… he is… surely you _know_ this.”  
  
John took a deep breath, ready to tell Greg that no, he didn’t know, and if Greg didn’t either tell him or stop talking about it immediately, he would… he would probably go back to Sherlock and ask if he could do anything to stop Sherlock from licking the body. But he didn’t have time to tell Greg any of this, because Sherlock left the body alone and walked to them.  
  
Thank god.  
  
“Poisoned,” Sherlock said, “obviously. Works in a shoe factory. Slightly addicted to _My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic_. Has a sister. Good eyebrows.”  
  
“Great,” Greg said and then blinked. “Good eyebrows?”  
  
“Might be relevant,” Sherlock said.  
  
“Are you cold?” John asked. “Please, don’t catch a flu. Can’t you close your coat? The wind is freezing.”  
  
“Stop worrying about me,” Sherlock said but smiled at John. Then he clapped his hands together. “Now, let’s go to the morgue. I need to test a theory about dead people’s eyebrows.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
Sherlock didn’t catch a cold. Instead, he caught two killers, one of which was for another case, so it was a very productive day. When they finally got back home around the evening news, Sherlock went to take a shower, because apparently the wind has messed his hair. John made himself a cup of tea, fetched his laptop from where Sherlock had left it and sat down in his armchair. Then he googled _Sherlock Holmes._  
  
Okay, so, there was John’s own blog, and then a lot of articles about Sherlock. Not any porn, though, which was good. No, it was _great._ He wouldn’t have wanted to read porn about Sherlock and him anyway.  
  
He googled _Sherlock Holmes and John Watson_ and found a column in which the writer was using them as an example of a modern relationship. It was weird but not sexually explicit. He sipped his tea and listened to the sounds from the bathroom. Sherlock was obviously still taking a shower.  
  
John googled _Sherlock Holmes and John Watson sex_.  
  
So -  
  
Yeah.  
  
Well.  
  
_Bloody hell._  
  
It seemed that there were… okay, he had known that there would be… there were _stories_ in which… people had actually written… and what the fuck was _Fuck Or Die_ , that didn’t sound good… and what did they mean by _Military Kink_ , surely they weren’t implying that Sherlock had a… bloody fucking hell, that was exactly what they were implying, and also… and what was this _Friends to Lovers_ , they weren’t lovers, and… and what was _fluff?_ What a stupid word. John as an accomplished writer whose blog had _a lot of_ readers would never use a word like _fluff._ No one would read a story that was supposed to be _fluff,_ not even if… apparently he and Sherlock were spending a quiet night at 221B and things escalated.  
  
He clicked the title. He wouldn’t read the story, obviously not, because that would be… weird. He would just take a glance.  
  
Just…  
  
A…  
  
Glance…  
  
“What’re you doing?”  
  
He dropped the laptop onto the floor. Sherlock was standing at the doorway, wearing nothing except a towel wrapped around his waist. Almost like in the story.  
  
“Nothing,” John said, “I was doing nothing, I was just… on the internet.” Then he watched with quiet horror as Sherlock walked to him, picked up his laptop and peered at it. For a second he thought that maybe the fall had been too much for the laptop, but judging by the look on Sherlock’s face, the damn thing was still working.  
  
“ _A Quiet Night at 221B_ ,” Sherlock said slowly. “By _JohnLikesHisToes_XX._ And what am I doing in this scene?”  
  
John swallowed. “You’re…”  
  
“Yes?” Sherlock asked, still holding the laptop.  
  
John was pretty sure Sherlock had already figured out what was happening in the scene. It was completely unnecessary to make John say it.  
  
“You’re giving me a…” Oh, goddamn. Sherlock already knew. “A blowjob.”  
  
“Do you realise,” Sherlock said and put the laptop in John’s lap, “that there’re stories that are far more inventive and original than this one? For example, there’s one in which we have to jump from a helicopter and during the fall we…” Sherlock frowned. “Well, I’m not going to spoil it for you.”  
  
“Maybe I just like regular things,” John said, his voice coming out oddly thin, “normal things, like…”  
  
“Like me giving you a… oral stimulation.”  
  
“It was very stimulative, yeah,” John said and then bit his lip. Oh, god, this was bad. He had been reading about them and Sherlock knew it, and the way Sherlock was watching him was… not disappointed, exactly, but a bit hard to read. Sherlock often looked at him like that. He hadn’t yet figured out what it meant. “I’m not going to read any more of those. I promise. I just wanted to… I wanted to see what people are writing. It’s good to be… aware.”  
  
“Certainly,” Sherlock said, shrugged and walked to the kitchen. John glanced over his shoulder. Sherlock had an exceptionally pretty backside. His shoulder blades were lovely and his neck was… “I understand,” Sherlock said. “And I don’t mind if you read them. Just don’t drop your laptop like that. It’d be terribly inconvenient for me if you broke it.”  
  
“Okay,” John said slowly. He kind of wanted to point out that Sherlock had his own laptop, too, but he was too distracted, because he was thinking about both the blowjob and half-naked Sherlock in the kitchen, and the mixture was very confusing. “Aren’t you cold, by the way? You’re almost naked.”  
  
“I _am_ naked, John,” Sherlock said. “Under the towel. I thought you didn’t mind. You’re a doctor, after all. You should be used to naked people.”  
  
“I _am_ used to naked people,” John said. He was also used to feeling he didn’t have a goddamn clue what they were talking about _._ “And I don’t really mind. It’s just… your toes get cold so easily.”  
  
“Ah, yes,” Sherlock said, “I need socks. Just a moment.” And then he went to his bedroom. A moment later, he came back wearing socks, boxers and John’s bathrobe. He had nicked it a few weeks ago. John was going to demand it back. Soon. Just not now. “Did you make me tea?” Sherlock asked, sitting down on the sofa.  
  
John blinked. It was so weird how great Sherlock looked wearing John’s bathrobe, when the same bathrobe on John was… only a bathrobe.  
  
“John? Tea?”  
  
Oh, right. “No. No, you can make your own tea.”  
  
“Fine,” Sherlock said, watching him. “Can I have your laptop?”  
  
“Not right now,” he said and cleared his throat. “I’m going to… I’m going to write something for the blog.”  
  
“Of course,” Sherlock said and sprawled on the sofa.  
  
John opened his laptop and kept reading.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The fact was that John totally wasn’t addicted to reading porn about Sherlock and him, and also, it wasn’t _porn_ that he was reading. Most of those stories had some kind of a plot. And explicit sex scenes were a valid part of literary tradition. And yeah, he only read stories that had explicit sex in them, but who could blame him, really? He hadn’t had sex with another human being in months. The last time that he had, it had backfired badly when the next morning, he had come home and found Sherlock sprawled on the sofa, and Sherlock had glanced at him, frowned, and looked sad for almost two hours. He didn’t want Sherlock to look sad. If John having sex with women made Sherlock look sad, well, John didn’t need to have sex with women. He was a goddamn adult. He knew how to wank.  
  
And it wasn’t as if John was reading porn about Sherlock and him all the time. He wasn’t. He went to work, too. He solved crimes with Sherlock. He had completely useless arguments about household tasks with Sherlock. And sometimes he watched movies with Sherlock, although that always required a lot of negotiation and a little bit of bribing. Two days ago, they had seen _Top Gun_ and for it, he had had to promise Sherlock that Sherlock could give him a head massage. It had turned out that Sherlock was very good with head massages, which had been a bit challenging for John, because just that morning he had read a story in which there had been a thorough head massage and a lot of explicit sex.  
  
But the point was that John wasn’t reading porn about him and Sherlock _a lot_ , and what even was _a lot_ , wasn’t it quite a philosophical question, really? Was two hours a day a lot? Was four hours a day a lot? Who even cared? Not him, because he was busy reading the new story by _They_Are_In_Love_Obviously,_ who was one of his favourite writers and seemed to think that Sherlock would be very loud during sex. John thought so too. Not that he thought about Sherlock having sex, because he didn’t, but if he had, he would have thought that Sherlock would be loud in bed. He _knew_ Sherlock, and the fact was that Sherlock was very loud in the most inappropriate moments, like, when it was past midnight. And who even did experiments with tiny explosives in the kitchen after midnight _,_ really? A very loud person, that was the answer.  
  
He didn’t tell Sherlock that he was reading those stories. Once or twice, he wondered if Sherlock knew anyway, but then he thought that probably not. Sherlock wasn’t interested in this particular topic. Sherlock had never showed any eagerness to talk about John’s sex life, except for pointing it out if John had indeed got laid. A long time ago, John had sometimes tried to talk to Sherlock about women, but Sherlock had just ignored all his questions and changed the subject. He had had a feeling that Sherlock didn’t want to talk about women and maybe found the whole topic irrelevant. And of course Sherlock had always hated women John dated, which was a mystery, because John had picked different kinds of women: short, tall, blond, brunette, talkative, quiet. But it seemed Sherlock hadn’t liked any of them. That was weird, because the only thing those women had in common seemed to be that they were dating John.  
  
People on the internet seemed to think that Sherlock was gay. Well, there was nothing new about that. People had thought for years that Sherlock and John were a couple and not just friends who lived together and shared everything. Some people even thought that _John_ was gay. John thought about that particular mystery, sitting in his armchair and watching as Sherlock stood on the coffee table wearing nothing but boxers and John’s pullover, which he had stolen last week. It was too short for him and John could see his arse. John wondered if Sherlock realised that. Probably not. Sherlock was facing away from him, staring at the wall onto which he had taped all the documents about their latest case. The weird thing was that they had solved the case just yesterday. Sherlock had a really nice arse.  
  
“Sherlock?” John asked, clearing his throat.  
  
Sherlock glanced at John over his shoulder. “John?”  
  
“What’re you doing?”  
  
“Just…” Sherlock waved his hand. “Investigating.”  
  
“Right,” John said. Well, that made sense. Sherlock was always investigating something. “Can I ask you something?”  
  
“Of course,” Sherlock said, turned to John and jumped off the coffee table. Then he sat on it. “What is it? Did you finally decide to let me buy you a suit?”  
  
“I have a suit,” John said, “and I never wear it.”  
  
“You’re going to wear it next on Saturday. My mother’s birthday, remember?” Sherlock paused and frowned. “I hope you’re coming with me.”  
  
“Of course I’m coming with you,” John said. “My suit is fine.”  
  
“I’m buying you a new one,” Sherlock said. “And I need to lend your body for the fitting.”  
  
“Well, you already have my soul, so I guess you can have my body, too,” John said. “Sherlock?”  
  
“Yes?” Sherlock asked. He was looking at John with that odd expression on his face again. It looked almost like he was thinking very hard about something, something about John. Almost as if he was trying to figure out what _John_ was thinking, which was absurd, because he was irritatingly great at knowing what John was thinking.  
  
“I was just wondering,” John said slowly, “why do people on the internet think I’m gay?”  
  
Sherlock’s face went suddenly very blank.  
  
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” John said. “I’m not gay.”  
  
“Well,” Sherlock said slowly. “I guess they just think that… you have lived with me for a very long time, and you haven’t been trying to find a girlfriend for a while, so maybe they think… that you have some kind of feelings about me.”  
  
“I _have_ feelings about you,” John said. “I have a lot of feelings. I’m still so angry at your for blowing up our microwave. And obviously I’d take a bullet for you. But I’m not gay.”  
  
Sherlock flinched. It was weird. Maybe he had caught something. “Well, I know you’re not gay,” Sherlock said in a flat tone. “You’ve mentioned that multiple times. Forty-five, to be exact. So, I know.”  
  
“Good,” John said and glanced at his laptop. “But people on the internet –“  
  
“I need to go,” Sherlock said, walked to the door and put on his coat. “I have to do… something.” He opened the door and then froze. “By the way, they don’t think you’re _gay_. They think that you might be bisexual, or that… that whatever you are, that you might have fallen in love with me, because you… because it kind of feels like that sometimes. So, I… no one thinks you’re _gay_ , John.”  
  
“Sherlock,” John said, clearing his throat, “please, don’t go out like that. You aren’t wearing trousers.”  
  
Sherlock turned to him, stared at him for a few moments, then blinked and walked into his own bedroom, still wearing the coat. John stared at his closed door for a long while. There was something about the conversation they had just had that felt a little off. He wished he knew what that was, but he didn’t, so he gave up and opened his laptop. He was beginning to think that he liked fluff.  
  
  
**  
  
  
That night, John read _The Good Boy_ by _ElephantInTheRoom._ He thought the writer had got Sherlock’s _posh boy_ vs. _cool nerd_ relation a little bit wrong, but he appreciated the plot twist in which Sherlock turned out to have a tiny praise kink.  
  
Unfortunately, John had to stop reading before the best part, because Sherlock took his laptop, threw it on the sofa and asked John what he thought about the removed fingers Sherlock had been storing in the fridge for scientific purposes. John said that they looked great. Sherlock grinned at him, gave him the laptop without looking at the screen, and went back to the kitchen with his fingers. A little later, the real Sherlock stopped the fictional Sherlock from getting his forefinger into John’s arse by demanding to know what John thought of his hair. Apparently he had changed the conditioner. John said his hair had never looked so pretty and then went back to reading.  
  
“What’re you reading?” Sherlock asked later. He was sitting on the sofa, holding the fingers in the glass. With his other hand, he was holding a cup of tea. He had asked if John wanted some, too, but John had been too distracted by two fingers in his arse. These writers seemed so certain he would like it.  
  
“Nothing,” he said and closed the laptop. Maybe it would be unwise to start another 50k words story tonight.  
  
Sherlock stared at him.  
  
“I read about us,” he said with a sigh.  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Don’t look so surprised, you knew that already.”  
  
“Of course I knew it,” Sherlock said. “You always have this specific look on your face, when you’re reading about us.”  
  
“No, I don’t.”  
  
“Yes, you do.”  
  
“No, I… what kind of a look?”  
  
“This kind of a look –“  
  
“ _Oh my god,_ Sherlock –“  
  
“It’s true.”  
  
“No, it’s not.”  
  
“I can take a picture.”  
  
“Absolutely not.”  
  
“Fine. What’re you reading, anyway?”  
  
“I’m…” _Shit._ He couldn’t just tell Sherlock, could he? But then again, Sherlock wouldn’t know the story, anyway. _Sherlock_ didn’t read them. “ _The Good Boy_.”  
  
“Hmm,” Sherlock said, frowning at him. “Interesting.”  
  
“Interesting?”  
  
“I was thinking,” Sherlock said, “what do you think of my clothes? Should I change my style? Maybe wear something more casual, like you?”  
  
“Absolutely not,” John said. “You’re perfect.”  
  
Sherlock smiled at him.  
  
“I like your shirt, by the way,” John said. “Is it new? When did you get it?”  
  
“Eight years ago,” Sherlock said. “I don’t really have a praise kink, John.”  
  
John opened his mouth and then closed it again. “I didn’t –“  
  
“It’s a nice story, though,” Sherlock said. “And you can obviously praise me as much you want.”  
  
“Sherlock,” John said and cleared his throat, “I don’t really… I know this isn’t _real_ , I just…”  
  
“I know,” Sherlock said, watching him. He took a deep breath. Sometimes he thought that Sherlock was a goddamn bastard who didn’t know anything about what was going on inside other people’s heads. And sometimes he thought no one had ever known him like Sherlock did, and no one ever would. He didn’t know what he had done to deserve Sherlock. Nothing, probably. It was like he had found the most precious thing in the whole world completely by accident. “John?”  
  
He blinked. “Yeah?”  
  
“Did you want to show me Matrix?” Sherlock asked. “You talked about it the other day.”  
  
“Oh,” John said and swallowed. “Yeah. You definitely should see Matrix. So… now?”  
  
“Why not? Unless you want to read instead.”  
  
“No,” John said quickly, “no, I don’t… I’d rather watch a movie with you than read about you and me… well, you know.”  
  
“Good,” Sherlock said. “Because I was beginning to think that maybe you like the fictional Sherlock more than me.”  
  
“I would never,” John said and took a deep breath. “So, we’re going to watch Matrix, then. What do you want? As bribes, I mean?”  
  
Sherlock frowned. “I suppose you could make me tea.”  
  
“Lemon or Earl Grey?”  
  
“Lemon,” Sherlock said. “Thank you, John.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” John said and went to the kitchen. He made two cups of tea and took them to the living room, where Sherlock had already made room for him on the sofa. He settled next to Sherlock. “You smell good, by the way.”  
  
“Thank you,” Sherlock said. “I used your deodorant.”  
  
John blinked. “What?”  
  
“Mine was on the top shelf.”  
  
“Because you’re the tall one.”  
  
“Remember when we had just moved in together,” Sherlock said, bumping his shoulder lightly against John’s, “and you always put your stuff on the top shelf, because you were trying to prove me that you aren’t short.”  
  
“I did not,” John said. His face felt a little warm. “Why did you use my deodorant? You don’t even like it. I got it from Tesco. It cost less than my socks.”  
  
“I wanted to know what you would say,” Sherlock said. “Are we going to watch the movie or what?”  
  
“Are you going to start using my deodorant from now on?”  
  
“It’d save me a lot of money.”  
  
“Only because you always buy fancy deodorants.” John glanced at Sherlock. “People would talk, you know. If they realised we’d be using the same deodorant.”  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Maybe they would, I don’t know, start writing porn about us. On the internet.”  
  
John bit his lip. Oh, god, it was nice to sit on the sofa like this, his left arm pressed against Sherlock’s. And Sherlock really smelled good. He smelled of… of John’s deodorant, but it mixed nicely with his conditioner and his… personal scent, probably.  
  
“So,” Sherlock said. “Matrix?”  
  
“Yeah,” John said.  
  
They watched the whole movie. When Sherlock started complaining, John told him he was very clever and pretty, and he shut up for almost fifteen minutes. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t have a praise kink,” John said, and Sherlock glared at him and said: “Don’t be stupid. It’s just you.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Nice to see you, John,” Sherlock’s mother said and hugged John. “It’s been too long since you boys last visited us. How are you? How’s work? Is Sherlock eating?”  
  
“Fine, fine, and sometimes,” John said and tried to shake hands with Sherlock’s father next, but the man just stepped forward and game John a hug. “I’m certainly trying to make him eat,” John said once the hugging had stopped. He didn’t mind, though. He had already got used to it.  
  
“They are huggers,” Sherlock said and leaned so close that John’s shoulder bumped into his arm. “I’m terribly sorry about that.”  
  
“Don’t be rude,” John said. “Hugging is fine.”  
  
“Yeah, dear, don’t be rude,” Sherlock’s mother said. “Of course we’re going to want to hug your… John.”  
  
“Well, my John would like to have a cup of tea,” Sherlock said. “I can make it, so maybe we could just –“  
  
“You aren’t going anywhere, dear, not before you tell me what you have been up to,” Sherlock’s father said.  
  
“Any interesting cases lately?” Sherlock’s mother asked.  
  
“Isn’t Mycroft here already?” Sherlock asked. “He could talk to you.”  
  
John stepped on Sherlock’s toe.  
  
“Well,” Sherlock said, clearing his throat. “We saw Matrix, John and me.”  
  
“Matrix?” Sherlock’s father repeated.  
  
“It’s a good movie,” Sherlock’s mother said, and then the three of them spent a few minutes talking about Matrix. John pushed his hands into the pockets of his new suit and looked around. It was just family, then. Sherlock and him, and Mycroft, whenever he would have time to get here. That was nice.  
  
A little later, Sherlock’s mother found John alone in the living room. He was looking at the bookshelf, and she settled at his side and told him that she had been reading Tolstoy lately.  
  
“Nice,” he said. “I’ve been reading…” Oh, _shit._ “Newspapers, mostly.”  
  
“That’s nice, too, dear,” Mrs. Holmes said. “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you, he looks happy. Happier than I’ve seen him in… in a long time, really.”  
  
John blinked. “What?”  
  
“Sherlock,” she said. “I’m so glad he found you.”  
  
John bit his lip. “We aren’t really…”  
  
“No, I know,” Mrs. Holmes said and patted John on the arm. “These things take time. Would you like some tea?”  
  
On the way back to London Sherlock asked John what his mother had said.  
  
“Nothing,” John said.  
  
“A blind child could deduce from your face that it wasn’t _nothing_.”  
  
John took a deep breath. “Do they know… your parents, I mean… they know that we aren’t a –“  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock said, crossed his arms over his chest and turned to look through the window. “Now be quiet, I’m thinking about the periodic table.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
“John,” Greg said over the phone, “I’m going to link you a story I found. I think you should read it.”  
  
John crossed his legs, chewing a croissant. “Is it about me and Sherlock?”  
  
“Yeah,” Greg said. “So, anyway –“  
  
“Is it explicit?”  
  
“I’m afraid so. So, I’m going to send –“  
  
“Is it fluff? Because I could use something to cheer me up. We had a tiny argument about cleaning up the kitchen last night. He had left blood on the table.”  
  
“That’s not good,” Greg said. “John, have you been reading those stories?”  
  
John bit his lip. Oh, right, he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that he spent a huge part of his free time reading fictional sex about Sherlock and him. “…yeah?”  
  
“Okay,” Greg said, “good, then maybe you aren’t going to be so shocked about this. I’m sending the link to you right now. Just read it. And if you… if you need to go out for a pint, I’m free this evening.”  
  
“Why would I want to go out for a pint?” John asked, sipping his tea.  
  
“Just read the story,” Greg said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
The story was titled _The 241 Reasons Why I Love John Watson._ When John started reading it, at first he thought Greg had a bad taste in fiction, which was unfortunate, especially because Greg liked John’s blog. Then John realised that the weird narrative style of _The 241 Reasons Why I Love John Watson_ was oddly fascinating. The story was written in the first-person point of view. John didn’t usually like the first-person point of view because it reminded him of his blog, and he didn’t like stories with Sherlock’s PoV either, because he wanted to be the narrator himself. But he liked this story. And it didn’t matter that the story turned out to be mainly just a list of things that John had done, said, or… _been_ , since he had moved in with Sherlock. It was nice, touching, surprisingly emotional and completely addictive.  
  
Then he realised that everything in _The 241 Reasons Why I Love John Watson_ had actually happened. Like, for real. To him. The _real_ him.  
  
“Oh,” Sherlock said.  
  
John glanced over his shoulder. Sherlock was behind his back, staring at the laptop screen. Sherlock had his goggles on, and he was only wearing one sock.  
  
“Don’t tell me you’re going to blow up the kitchen now,” John said, but his voice came out oddly thin. “I’m not even halfway through this.”  
  
“It won’t get much better,” Sherlock said. He sounded like he was panicking a little, which was bad, because he was holding a blow torch.  
  
“Put that thing away,” John said, reminding himself that he was a soldier and therefore could handle difficult situations, “and put your goggles away, and find your missing sock, and come here.”  
  
Sherlock turned around and disappeared into his bedroom for a long time. When Sherlock came back, John had already finished reading _The 241 Reasons Why I Love John Watson._ He had cried a little at the end. Sherlock glanced at him and sat down on the sofa across from him. Sherlock was wearing pressed trousers and a white dress shirt. John, on the other hand, was wearing an old pullover, a bathrobe, and no trousers at all. It had been on the list, the way he dressed when he thought he wasn’t going to leave home. Apparently it was both stupid and hot, only the writer had used fancier words.  
  
“I wonder who wrote this,” John said, nodding at his laptop. “Seems like it has to be someone who actually knows me.”  
  
Sherlock was chewing on his lower lip. He looked genuinely nervous. John could relate to that, because his goddamn _toes_ were shaking. He pressed his feet against the floor and it helped a bit.  
  
“Maybe it was Greg,” he said to Sherlock as casually as he could. “He sent the link to me. It could be him. I like the style a lot. I’ve got to tell him that.”  
  
Sherlock took a sharp breath. It was very dramatic, and it made John feel warmer inside than all the fluff he had read in these past weeks. “Oh my god,” Sherlock said, glaring at John. “It wasn’t Greg. It was _me._ _I_ wrote that.”  
  
“You?” John asked. “You wrote this?”  
  
Sherlock nodded.  
  
“You wrote _The 241 Reasons Why I Love John Watson?_ ”  
  
“ _Yes._ ”  
  
“I didn’t think you were interested in writing fiction.”  
  
“It’s not fiction,” Sherlock said in a sharp tone. “It’s an essay. About…” And then he went very quiet.  
  
John waited for a few seconds. He would have waited longer, because it was kind of nice to see Sherlock squirming, only he didn’t think his own heart could handle it. “And for how long have you been thinking about this?”  
  
“Since you shot the cabbie,” Sherlock said and then blinked. “Oh. You meant the essay.”  
  
“Yeah,” John said. Okay, his heart couldn’t handle this _at all._ “Yeah, I meant… _since I shot the cabbie?_ ”  
  
“That was very hot,” Sherlock said in a very weak voice. “John, if I need to apologise for writing a detailed report of your private life and putting it on the internet –“  
  
“It’s not a detailed report, though,” John said. _Oh god, oh god, oh god._ “I cried at the end, you know.”  
  
“Really?” Sherlock asked, frowning fiercely. “Why? Was it so bad? I checked the grammar twice.”  
  
“No,” John said quickly, “absolutely not, I meant that... it’s not an _essay_ , Sherlock, it’s a love story.”  
  
Sherlock opened his mouth and then closed it again.  
  
“It’s _our_ love story,” John said, breathing as steadily as he could. “And I’m just shocked that I’m not a narrator.”  
  
“You can write your own version,” Sherlock said in a quiet voice.  
  
“I’m just wondering,” John said and put the laptop carefully onto the side table, “why stop at 241?”  
  
“I’m working on a sequel,” Sherlock said, staying perfectly still while John stood up, walked over to him and stopped only when their knees were almost bumping together. “But I had been adding things to the list for some time already, and I was…”  
  
“What?” John asked. Sherlock spread his knees so that John could step in between them. John wondered if Sherlock even knew he was doing that.  
  
“I was tired of waiting,” Sherlock said.  
  
John cleared his throat. “Waiting for what?”  
  
“I’m not sure exactly,” Sherlock said, looking up at him. “You tell me.”  
  
“I think,” John said slowly, “I _think_ that at this part of a story, we usually kiss.”  
  
“Kiss?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“On the mouth?”  
  
“Yes, please,” John said.  
  
Sherlock blinked at him. “So, this is that kind of a story.”  
  
“I hope so,” he said. “I admit I didn’t realise it in the beginning, but what can I say, I like plot twists.”  
  
“You are the biggest plot twist that’s ever happened to me,” Sherlock said.  
  
“You read that somewhere,” John said. “How do you feel about explicit content?”  
  
“I like it,” Sherlock said. “But I want to kiss first. Are you going to kiss me?”  
  
“Yes,” John said.  
  
  
**  
  
  
John was the happiest man in the world. He was also a little hungry, which wasn’t ideal, but then again, he had his arms wrapped around Sherlock and his neck pressed against the back of Sherlock’s neck, which _was i_ deal, so all in all everything was pretty damn fine. He had a feeling that maybe Sherlock and he were in a relationship now. Maybe they were boyfriends or something. Maybe they would have a lot of sex and kiss a thousand times and fall asleep in each other’s arms, like in all those stories that John had been reading. He liked those stories. He liked them very much. But he liked the real Sherlock more. He liked the real Sherlock so much that he supposed he could just fall asleep right here…  
  
“John,” Sherlock’s voice said. “ _John._ _John_. Wake up. You can’t sleep.”  
  
_The goddamn bastard._ “What? I was just –“  
  
“I noticed,” Sherlock said. “You were snoring. You can stay in my bed if you want to, but I need to go.”  
  
“No,” John said, but Sherlock was already trying to wriggle free of his grip. “Don’t go, Sherlock. Stay here. I just realised that I love you, like, five minutes ago.”  
  
“Forty-two minutes ago,” Sherlock said, “and I can’t.” He climbed off the bed and leaned down to kiss John on the forehead. Sherlock smelled absolutely amazing. John wanted to push his nose against every spot on Sherlock’s body.  
  
“We just had sex,” John said. “For the first time. Just fucking cuddle with me, Sherlock.”  
  
“I cuddled with you for almost five minutes already.”  
  
“Five minutes is _nothing._ ”  
  
“Sorry,” Sherlock said, looking around. He was probably trying to find his clothes. John was pretty sure they had kicked Sherlock’s boxers under the bed, but he wasn’t going to tell Sherlock that. “Where are my pants, John?”  
  
“No idea,” John said. “Stay in bed.”  
  
“Well, I don’t need them anyway,” Sherlock said and picked John’s bathrobe from the floor. “Not anymore, when you’ve already had intimate relations with my penis.”  
  
John tried not to laugh. He also tried not to fall in love more. He failed at both attempts. “Please, don’t call it your _penis._ ”  
  
“I called it my _penis_ when we were having sex and that only made you more excited,” Sherlock said, straightening his back. He looked perfect. His hair was a mess and the skin around his mouth had gone red, because John had rubbed his stubble against it. “I have to go now, John. See you in the living room.”  
  
“Why?” John asked. He was too happy to be actually bitter, but he thought he was pretty good at faking it. “Why do you have to go?”  
  
“I have to write a sequel,” Sherlock said and walked out of the room.


End file.
